Iraq’s Propaganda Machine Cranks Up : Persian Gulf: Official statements and a TV special portray nation as a victor turned victim. The citizenry seems convinced.

As the final moments ticked away Friday to the latest allied-imposed deadline for Iraq to obey U.N. authority in the wake of the Persian Gulf War, President Saddam Hussein’s regime blanketed this anxious nation with the imagery of a victor turned victim.

The well-orchestrated campaign coincided with Iraq’s backing down at midnight here, conditionally permitting flights by U.N. inspection teams into Iraqi airspace beginning today. The effort began with a one-hour documentary on state-run television that built the case for Iraq’s victory in the 1991 war--a show aptly titled “Desert Illusion.”

The Iraqi regime also took foreign journalists to the site of two destroyed houses, two miles outside the strategic southern city of Basra.

There, the Iraqis said a man and his son were killed by an errant bomb during Wednesday night’s allied air strike on missile batteries scattered across the southern third of Iraq.

Iraq has said that 19 people--including two civilians--were killed and 15 were injured in the Wednesday raid by more than 100 aircraft flown by American, British and French pilots.

Friday, in a show of solidarity with Baghdad widely reported in Arab capitals, a tour bus rumbled along the 310-mile highway from Jordan, packed with delegates ranging from Iraqi-born Americans to radical fundamentalists. They will attend an international Islamic conference scheduled to open here today.

As if there were any doubt left, Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammed Said Sahaf underscored the point in his 11th-hour statement permitting the U.N. weapons inspection flights to resume--at their own risk.

“Iraq is now a target to a military aggression by the U.S., British and French planes, and Iraq is practicing its natural right of self-defense,” he declared in a statement broadcast nationwide.

By all accounts, the Iraqi government’s pitch to its people was working.

“There is no legitimacy to this bombing by (President) Bush,” said a shopkeeper who identified himself only as Mohammed at a remote rest stop 80 miles outside Baghdad. “This is not legal by the U.N. This is only Bush hitting Saddam. But there are only five more days to go. When Bush is gone, (President-elect Bill) Clinton will change, and Saddam will change.”

Mohammed was speaking freely to two passing American journalists, without the usual accompaniment of government guides. His assessment was shared by many others in and around the Iraqi capital.

The fear of more air strikes was tempered by optimism that the incoming Clinton Administration might have an Iraq policy different from that of the Bush Administration, and by seemingly genuine support for the legitimacy of the Iraqi regime’s stand in the latest crisis.

The support for Hussein and his government was clear at Basra, the site where the Iraqis asserted the allies had caused “collateral damage” in Wednesday’s air strike.

“Bush came because everything was rebuilt (by Iraq after the 1991 war),” said Hamdiya Qathir through a stream of tears, as she gave her opinion of why an allied bomb fell on her house and killed her husband, Bashir Ghait Wawi, a driver at a nearby petrochemical works, and her 4-year-old son, Zain Abedin. “He tried to destroy Iraq again.”

Earlier, at a bomb-crater site, an Iraqi soldier shouted the reason why Iraq’s Ministry of Information so quickly mobilized two buses for the eight-hour drive to Basra. “These journalists have come to see the crimes against innocent people!” he declared.

Despite the tour, it remained unclear just how “collateral” the damage was, as soldiers stopped reporters from getting too close to a compound enclosed by barbed wire about 100 yards away.

Along the major roads to the south and west of Baghdad, it was clear that Iraq was in a state of high military alert.

Lines of tanks could be seen, dug in around several installations. Military checkpoints ringed the capital. And Iraq’s rebuilt telephone system appeared strained beyond capacity.

But under the sway of the regime’s propaganda, the capital appeared far more relaxed than it was almost two years ago to the day during the prelude to the massive aerial bombardment of Baghdad that opened the U.S.-led war to drive Iraq from Kuwait.

There were some lines at gas stations; markets, however, were free of hoarders and the city had an overwhelming sense of fear-fatigue.

In fact, in the wake of Wednesday night’s air attack that hit just a handful of targets far from the capital, many here have given the strike a nickname of their own. They call it, “Little Desert Wind.”